Dimapur, February 17 (MExN): The Ao Baptist Arogo Mungdang (ABAM) has called for participation in the prayer for the 2023 NLA Election and to pray for the persecuted Christians in India on February 19.
Making the call, Rev Dr Mar Pongener, Executive Secretary, ABAM in a press note said, “Today God’s given prime time has come for the Christians in Nagaland to consciously participate in selecting our rightful political leaders with fervent prayers to the God of all Creation and our Redeemer Jesus Christ.”
“As we also join our hearts in the prayer for persecuted Christians,” Dr Mar said, “we are reminded that the contemporary Indian scenario is marked by the phenomenon of the resurgence of religious fundamentalism causing violence to our society.” He pointed out that “there is rampant persecution of Christians and other minority communities who experience not only pain and shedding of blood but the exercise of physical force by the dominant community that damages or forcibly interfere with the personal freedom, verbal or violent conducts.”
Stating that “communalism has become a national menace with detrimental effect on the minority Christian community who became easy targets,” he added, “We witness newer dangers to society, to democratic and secular values in the form of communalism, communal violence and rise of new social political forces based on religion in the political arena.”
Dr Mar also made an appeal to Christians to be “vigilant towards the engineered and tactful forces of unsecularization, militancy and politicization of religion, exclusivism, dictatorship, fanaticism, misogyny, ill treatment of minorities, jingoistic nationalism, violence and continue to resist against any dehumanizing forces that are taking place at our doorsteps.”
“Christians, let us ask ourselves whether we are utilizing God’s given time in a meaningful way in the light of what the Bible has taught us,” he added.
